LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST 



179 



classification into natural families, seemed to him 

 to oppose the development of the arrangement of 

 Linn6." 



Lamarck's style was never a highly finished one, and 

 his incipient essays seemed faulty to Buffon, who took 

 so much pains to write all his works in elegant and pure 

 French. So he begged the Abb6 Haiiy to review the 

 literary form of Lamarck's works. 



Here it might be said that Lamarck's is the philo- 

 sophic style ; often animated, clear, and pure, it at 

 times, however, becomes prolix and tedious, owing to 

 occasional repetition. 



But after all it can easily be understood that the 

 discipline of his botanical studies, the friendship 

 manifested for him by Buffon, then so influential 

 and popular, the relations Lamarck had with Jussieu, 

 Hauy, and the zoologists of the Jardin du Roi, were 

 all important factors in Lamarck's success in life, a 

 success not without terrible drawbacks, and to the 

 full fruition of which he did not in his own life 

 attain. 



